What applies to the fine art of striptease, in the immortal words of Gypsy’s Mazeppa, is also nowadays the ultimate maxim for modern producing: “You Gotta Have a Gimmick/If You Wanna Have a Chance!” No one exemplifies it more brilliantly than Andrew Lloyd Webber: as his wife Madeleine proudly proclaimed to the Evening Standard after Summer Strallen’s official opening night in The Sound of Music on Monday night, “Andrew at [nearly] 60 is coming up with the ideas that younger producers should be having”. She was, of course, referring to his masterstroke of using television to promote that production, first by turning a complete unknown into a star when Connie Fisher was found via reality TV contest – and now by turning an established West End talent into a showbiz wannabe via a TV soap, Hollyoaks, when Summer Strallen was “infiltrated” into the series in a storyline that had her aspiring to be in The Sound of Music.
As the Standard story put it, Lloyd Webber himself “even made a cameo appearance on he serial when her character stalked him and demanded the chance to prove she could make it in the West End”. And Lloyd Webber is the past master, too, at the soundbite: “We had the most fantastic spring with Connie and I think we’re going to have a glorious Summer”, he quipped to the Standard (though he did, at least, have the good grace to preface it by saying it was “a corny thing to say”).
I was on a plane back from the US last Monday night, so I finally caught Summer last night – and if nothing else, she of course gives lie to the fact that a talent like hers that has been nurtured via a full and proper apprenticeship in musical theatre (professionally since she was 16, and long before that even appearing in a previous London production of The Sound of Music in 1992 when she was just six years old, as the second-youngest of Captain von Trapp’s brood) couldn’t have been found in the traditional way. But it certainly couldn’t have turned someone into a star in the same way that Connie was made and claimed as the people’s own choice for the part. Now the public, who previously wouldn’t have known Summer from winter (Lloyd Webberisms are catching), have been able to become acquainted with a fictional version of the actress to create a new sense of identification and ownership with her.
But just how far can the idea of a West End gimmick be stretched? We’ve had any number of West End Peter Pan’s in our time, of course – but has this most beloved of English theatrical stories been ever presented in Spanish before? And as a musical, moreover, with English surtitles? But if Peter Pan – El Musical sounded like some kind of musical theatre wind-up, yesterday it came closer to being a reality when a media launch for the production that arrives at the Garrick Theatre on March 28 was held there. With a Captain Hook in full panto garb – complete with red feathered hat (that fell off when he hit one of his higher notes), ruffled shirt, black collared boots and ringlet wig – a colleague whispered to me, “It’s like something off the Harry Enfield Show”. During the short Q&A that followed, I gently enquired what the West End capitalisation was, and was informed that it was going to clock in at around £1m. I incredulously asked if they could hope to recoup that during a run of barely a month, and (via a translator, so something could have been lost in translation) the producer admitted, “We know what you mean, but it’s not about that”. Clearly it is seen as having some kind of ambassadorial role for the cause of the Spanish musical abroad. I only hope that they don’t lose their (ruffled) shirt on it.
Still, perhaps we could send Spain the production of Zorro – the Musical that has just kicked off this week in Eastbourne for a six-date tour, if a West End theatre does not materialise for it by the end of the run. As an actor from another show looking for a West End home wrote to me yesterday, “It’s almost as if the West End were Heathrow and everything is in a holding pattern to see which runway is clear after a crash! And some shows will simply run out fuel while they are hanging around.”
Leave a comment